Brand

If you build it, they will come

Dollar Shave Club could have built a trusted brand but instead decided to sell the company to Unilever, who already had a trusted brand and other things going for them, for 1 billon dollars. There was nothing proprietary about what DSC was doing. To keep ahead of the copycats, DSC flooded the market with slick advertising thereby gaining instant credibility.

A few ways to gain trust in the digital era.

While not as sexy as blowing your brand up with expensive advertising, growing it slowly using simple strategies may accomplish the same thing. (1) Prominently letting your customers know about your return policy or any shipping deals going on engenders trust. (2) Providing customers a quick way to chat with a sales agent is another way to start building trust. Unfortunately, no one, especially not large companies, want to handle basic questions anymore. Luckily, chatbots are available to assume tier 1 support at a price even small businesses can afford. Other conveniences, like (3) offering a variety of payment methods, e.g., Google Pay, prevents dropped carts and gets repeat business. Finally, and not to be underestimated, (4) making it obvious you want new customers to join your mailing list is oddly still very important. (Seriously. Stick a dialog box directly in their faces). Despite all the ways we communicate online, email is still the #1 way to stay connected with your audience.